MortalWombat

They believe that Kurt Cobain was the Messiah?

Magdlyn

LOL!

Ahem.

Here is Paul directly saying a story from the Torah is an allegory:

Gal 4:22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave and one by a free woman.
Gal 4:23 But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, the son of the free woman through promise.
Gal 4:24 Now this is an allegory: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar.
Gal 4:25 Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children.
Gal 4:26 But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.

dado

:notworthy

post of the day, lol.

blt to go

Question 1: But isn't just the stating of the name neutral as to whether Jesus literally believed in the events of the O.T.?

For example, if he believed that Moses and the burning bush was an allegory, he would refer to it as "Moses and the burning bush." If actual: "Moses and the burning bush." Neither protrays belief in literal or allegory. (Obviously, if he stated, "like the tale of Moses and the burning bush," that would be different.)

So is there any incident of Jesus treating it as an allegory, not factual?

I would note we do the same today. We would refer to a "modern-day Robin Hood," or (especially in sports) a "David and Goliath" without referencing whether we believe in the history of such persons.

Or, another example, we often use the allegory of a murderer stating, "if a murderer did this, or a murderer was here," but when we state "Hitler" (a historical figure that everyone except Gibson's dad believes in) we have switched from allegory to factual.

Question 2. Assuming the world was more mythical in its religious practices, (and I think this is such a safe assumption to say otherwise is not realistic) would this hinder Jesus if he was a literalist?

In other words, if we are now more "literal," I still see nutjobs, er... mythical persons such as Jonathan Edwards amass a large following.

Is it possible that in mythical times, a "literalist" would amass a following? I would defer to dado and Karen Armstrong vis-a-vis Mageth.

Genuine questions.

Now, to answer the O.P. of "Was Jesus an inerrantist?" the answer is absolutely NOT. Certainly one defining characteristic of inerrantists is that they attempt to HARMONIZE apparent contradictions. Not CREATE them. Never had an inerrantist say, "Hey, you MISSED one! Let me give a contradiction that you didn't think was one before!"

If Jesus was god, and his words were being recorded, and he was an inerrantist, why on earth would he CREATE a contradiction? I would give you his identifying the WRONG high priest! (Mark 2:23; 1 Sam 21:1)

Assuming Mark recorded his words right (and I would LOVE to see an inerrantist state he did not) then Christ created problems, not resolved them. Very untypical for an inerrantist.

NOGO

I gave an example. That example does not disagree with Karen's statements.
Paul read between the lines and created myth.
Paul believed the story to be true otherwise his idea that man had fallen and therefore a saviour was needed would simply fall apart.

This is a million miles away from what people say today. For example some Christians will tell you that the six day creation is only symbolic and that in fact creation took much longer. Now to question what the Bible says in this way you require to know something which you believe the people who wrote the Bible did not know. You need another authority.

Paul believed that the bible was from God and therefore true. He had no other information to question it. In fact back then looking to ancient text was an appeal to authority like quoting Karen Armstrong.

NOGO

The word "deeper" here tells me that we are not talking about the same thing.
Words can both be true literally and also have deeper meaning.
One does not deny the other.

Sven

(1) This is one out of twelve. I'm waiting for you citing a similar quote for the remaining eleven.
(2) How do you know that he also wasn't speaking allegorically?

Since geologists showed that the Earth was not created in six days 6000 years ago, this at least casts some doubt on the whole story in Genesis.

No, it doesn't. There's no such thing as an "evolutionist".

Did he? Is there a disclaimer in front of each allegory? Which kind of bible are you reading?

Edited to add: I see you ignored this: "How do you know his words are recorded accurately, that is, perhaps only the gospel writers were inerrantists?"

Magdlyn

Here was are getting to the heart of it.

First of all, inerrantist does not=literalist. A literalist takes everything literally, ie: as history of actual events. An inerrantist believes there are no mistakes made in recording. Obviously in a written history, there could be mistakes made, or even, given multiple authors, differing interpretations of actual events. I guess an inerrantist believes, since God inspired the whole bible, he did not allow his human dictaphones to make any mistakes.

But my real point, as per the quotes above is this: if one finds deeper meaning in a story, and also believes in the story as factual history, is one a literalist or something more? What if one finds the symbolic meaning to be more important than the chance the story is accurate history? As I think Paul did, and Jesus is also portrayed as suggesting.

If they were Jews, would they not have been aware of the different levels of understanding of Jewish scriptures dado described? Would they go around exhorting adults to believe in their scriptures on the level of peshat, or on a much deeper level? We are talking the survival of an eternal soul here. Would a literal interpretation be enough, or would we need to go deeper, for intelligent adults? (To partially answer my own question, most of Paul's discourse is on the level of exegesis and all of the gospels are Tanakh midrash, so we can see they felt free to reinterpret the old stories for their present times.)

NOGO said:

We do not actually know if Paul or Jesus believed in the ancient stories as facts. I think, it did not matter to them. I think the symbolism and import of the old stories to Paul and the evangelists was on the deeper level, they did not even need the old stories to be literally true. After all, they, just as we, had no other way of determining their authenticity, besides their own scrolls from the 7th century. And Paul had to depend on the Greek translations. He was not a Pharisee. He did not even understand Hebrew.

Mageth

Great post, Magdlyn. I was thinking about this last night and was going to say much of what you said about it not mattering to the NT writers whether the stories were history or myth.

That's one way to put it. And that's the nature of mythos as opposed to logos - the significance of a story is in the interpretation, "between the lines", not in the literal reading of the story as history.

I disagree that Paul necessarily believed the story to be true (i.e. true as literal history). In any case, the important point is that Paul et al felt free to reinterpret the stories of the OT in light of their new mythology. They were most definitely not limited to a literal interpretation of the stories. The idea that the Biblical stories must be read as linear, literal history is a modern phenomenon.

And I think I'm correct to say that the writers of the Gen. 2 creation account felt free to write in the account of six-day creation to a pre-existing creation myth for allegorical purposes - e.g. to lend support to the sabbath. It's important to note that Genesis includes two significantly different creation accounts Gen 1:1-2:3 and Gen 2:3-3. The second is the older, the first is the newer and excludes six-day creation from the account.

How would this be possible if the writers believed the pre-existing myths were to be treated as literal history? They were creating myth, and knew they were. It's important to clarify that by "myth" here, I do not mean they thought what they were writing was "untrue" or a fiction as we often understand it; what they were writing was intended to symbolically represent some deeper truth they perceived about the world - mythos again. But it was not intended to represent literal history. In Jesus and Paul's time, mythos was still the way people looked at the world and their religion, so the writers of the NT would have understood the Tanakh in the light of mythos, not logos.

A problem you're having is trying to analyze what people of the First Century may or may not have known or believed through a modern, rational, mindset (logos). Understandable; I have the same problem. Armstrong's books have helped me to understand this limitation.

I believe the people of the First Century "knew" that the writers of Genesis did not know and record the literal history of creation, but understood, through their mythic view of the world, that the writers were creating myth. They did not have the benefit of a modern, rational approach to the texts. Thus, whether the Genesis accounts were literally true or myth was not even a question they would consider.

He could believe the myths were from God and "true" (expressing truths symbolically) without considering them literal, historical accounts. That's something we need to understand when dealing with mythology.

He didn't need to question it if he understood the texts in the light of mythos.

You're misusing "appeal to authority" if you're accusing me of committing a logical fallacy by "appealing" to Armstrong. I am not guilty of making an appeal to authority by referencing and quoting Armstrong on this subject. Look up Argumentum ad verecundiam on the Logic FAQ:

http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/logic.html

ichabod crane

Toto, can you please name a book which you believe is completely error free and infallible? I'd be most interested to get a hold of it. Since no book meets these standards, you seem to be saying that we can't believe anything in any book anywhere. I have a textbook on, say, computer programming. Now I would bet that there is at least one error somewhere in that book. Should I therefore disbelieve the rest of it?

This isn't true. Orthodox Jews believe the earth to be literally around 6,000 years old. In fact the Jewish calender is numbered from the alleged date of creation. The date today is 4th of Tamuz, 5764, on the orthodox calender. That is supposed to mean that it is 5764 years since creation. See the following link:

http://www.hebcal.com/hebcal/

I'm of course not advocating their view. But the point is that fundamentalism is not just a Christian phenomena.

By the way, it is important to be clear about two distinct issues, which Magdlyn has quite correctly alluded to. I'm afraid I've confounded them a bit, but the original poster also confounded them. The one is the issue of hermeneutics (how we interpret the text), the other is the issue of inerrancy (the veracity of the text). These are two different issues. For instance, an atheist could agree completely with a fundamentalist about the interpretation of the text, but disagree about its truthfulness. An atheist could agree that Genesis teaches that the world was created in 6 days only 6,000 years ago, but just think that Genesis is wrong. So we shouldn't confuse the issue of literal versus non-literal interpretation, with the issue of truth verses falsity of the text.

A related issue is, if we accept that God or some supernatural power is involved in the text in some way, is how we distinguish between the human and divine meanings. For instance, a simple approach would be to say that the literal meaning is human and fallible, but there is a hidden divine meaning which the author did not comprehend or intend. But there are lots of other approaches. Fundamentalism tends to the view that the text was virtually dictated by God and eliminates the human element for all intents and purposes.

I've already cited plenty of evidence that Jesus didn't take the Old Testament literally, and his disciples certainly did not. Is Galations 4 "literal interpretation"?

On this, Magdlyn, if on nothing else, you and I agree.

I can't believe that anyone who has read Paul carefully could say this. He RARELY interprets it literally. Part of the problem is that Christians are so used to interpreting the Old Testament through the eyes of Paul, that they don't realize how odd and non-literal his interpretations were. I've already mentioned Galations 4, which you literalist guys haven't provided a good answer to. Let me take some examples from Romans. In 9:25-26 he quotes Hosea 1:9-10. However, in context Hosea 1:9-10 is clearly speaking of Israel, who had been rejected by God, being accepted again by him. It has nothing to do with Gentiles, as Paul interprets it. Similarly, in 10:19 he quotes Deu. 32:21, which in context speaks of God's threat to bring the people into captivity by another nation, not a new people of God as Paul understands it. In 10:20 he quotes Isaiah 65:1, which in context almost certainly refers to rebellious Israel, but applies it to the Gentiles. In 15:9-11 he cites OT passages which do refer to Gentiles, but he fails to comment on the fact that these passages imply that the Gentiles are not the people of God (“Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people�). In all these cases Paul ignores the original exclusivist, covenantal meaning of the OT texts, and applies them universally and outside of the covenant.

May I recommend the following book for starters: Hays, R.B. 1989. Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, Yale University Press, New Haven.

"Midrash" has become a general excuse for every kind of non-literal reading of the Old Testament. Scholars have pointed out that its meaning is so vague and flexible that practically anything can be called "midrash".

Neither does it uphold the literal meaning. And if the apostles persistently interpret the text non-literally, as they do, it starts to make you wonder how they viewed the original meaning.

You obviously haven't read the early Christian writers. To quote the conservative evangelical New Testament scholar Douglas Moo, "the allegorical method, then, quickly came to dominate patristic interpretation of the Old Testament�.

It was not the only game in town! What about the Manichaeans, the Gnostics, the Paulicians, the Bogomils, the Cathars, the Waldensians, the Hussites, the Lollards? All these groups were pre-Reformation. Just because the Catholic church exterminated these people and burned their writings, doesn't mean that they didn't exist. They did exist and in large numbers; hundreds of thousands of Cathars were killed by Roman Catholics during the Albigensian Crusade alone. I have more respect for these people than for Catholicism.

I think that Paul and Jesus may well have thought that the Old Testament events happened really as described. After all, they didn't have modern historical criticism or other information at their disposal. But the point is that they didn't see the spiritual significance of the texts in those terms. The spiritual significance they saw as lying in a deeper sense. So whether they happened to believe that what happened literally was true is of little importance. They probably believed in a flat earth. So what?